My Top 15 horror movies of all-time: 1970 - present

[Dominic]

Diebitter asked me to do this list, as he is curreently covering the pre-1970 horror films...

There's a few films that did not make my list for specific reasons:

The Silence of the Lambs - It's not really a horror movie, it's a thriller.

Jaws - While parts are very scary, I think of this film as an adventure story.

Suspiria/Deep Red Dario Argento is a unique horror director, but if I'm honest with myself I merely like these films, I don't love them.

The Ring - one of those films a lot of people absolutely love but I thought was a truly horrible crapfest.

Phantasm - See above.

There are others that might make my top 15 if I were doing this on another day: Don't Look Now, The Tenant, Poltergeist, The Fly, The Eye, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Hellraiser, Evil Dead 2, The Addiction, Henry: Portait of a Serial Killer, Ringu, The Howling, The Brood, Salem's Lot, The Hills Have Eyes, The Blair Witch Project, and The Hidden.

So...in ascending order...numbers 15-11 of my 15 Favorite Horror Movies of All Time:


15. Near Dark, 1987, Kathryn Bigelow

I've written about these original little movie before. It's like no other genre film I've ever seen. It combines horror with the western and it works completely. The movie stars Adrian Pasdar as a modern day Texas cowboy who falls for winsome Jenny Wright...only to find out she's part of a marauding band of vampires who roam the dusty plains of Texas, searching for victims.

The vampires include Bill Pullman, Jeanette Goldstein and the great Lance Henriksen. It's both a very scary movie, and one that can be surprisingly romanting and touching at the same time.

One of my favorite scenes in cinema is in this film: The vampires are holed up in aboarded up house for the day to protect themselves from the daytime sun, but the cops find them and a massive shootout takes place. Naturally, the vampires are immune to the bullets fired at them, but not to the ever-increasing number of bullet holes that pierce their house and let the deadly sunlight in...


14. Re-Animator, 1985, Stuart Gordon

I've also written about this little masterpiece before. Based on the H.P. Lovecraft story, Re-Animator is a deliriously over-the-top gorefest that is both truly scary and ridiculously funny at the same time. The premise: a grad student helps his Professor discover a serum that brings the dead back to life. But not in a nice way, if you catch my drift.

What else can you say about a film where the bad guy has his head chopped off early on but doesn't die - instead, he carries his head around in his hands while he continues his evil deeds? AND he still wants to have sex with his captured, nubile young victim?? Great stuff. It also stars the ever-creepy Jeffrey Combs and the ever-delectable Barbara Crampton, who both went on to make
From Beyond for director Gordon only a year later.


13. Carrie, 1976, Brian De Palma

IMO, this is the best adaptation of a Stephen King novel. It's brilliant for three reasons: 1) De Palma films the first 3/4 of the movie like it's a cheap exploitation picture, setting us up for what's to come; 2) the performances are incredible: Both Sissy Spacek and Piper Laurie were nominated for Oscars - an almost unheard of feat for a horror movie; 3) the tour de force of an ending. Carrie's humiliation and revenge at the prom is stunning in its ferocity and stylistic daring. De Palma splits the screen in two, sometimes three different parts (like the show 24), showing us the chaotic panic as students try to flee the burning gym while at the same time revealing Carrie's deadly stillness. It's a sequence that is simply breathtaking.

The way De Palma mainpulates us into wanting Carrie to be chosen Prom Queen while at the same time urging her to seek vengeance AND hoping the other students are spared her wrath is flawless in its execution.

The very end also is justifiably famous for the 'it's only a dream" shocker with Amy Irving. Carrie is a masterpiece of horror.


12. Odishon, 1999, Takeshi Miike

Audition. I remember walking out of the theater after being blindsided by this litle gem, stumbling out into the daylight, being very grateful I had not chosen to see this movie at night.

Director Miike makes very distrubing Japanese cinema, and this is probably his most disturbing one of all. A shy, single father pretends to have an audition for a movie but is really just auditioning pretty girls for potential mates. It's a litle creepy, yes, but we understand his desire and empathize with his lonliness. When he starts dating a lovely, reserved woman it seems to have worked. In fact, for the first hour of the film, Audition is a quiet, even somber, love story.

But when the girl finds out the truth about the audition...and we see something struggling in a canvas bag in the background of her apartment while she's talking to her new love on the phone...well, we know something's not right.

And boy, is something not right. I don't want to ruin the ending for those of you who have not seen it, but man...this Girl uses needles and sharp wire in a way that will make you cringe with horror. Be warned: the last half hour of this movie is one of the most disturbing and violent sequences ever put to film. Scared the bejeesus out of me.


11. The Sixth Sense, 1999, M. Night Shyamalan

I went back and forth on this one, not because I don't think it's a great film - it is - but because I wasn't sure if it was really a horror film or more of a love story with horror elements to it. So I watched it again.

Geeze, this is one scary movie. It brought me back to when I first saw it, with no warning or preperation for the "big twist," and how affected by it I was.

Bruce Willis is great. So is the kid. The screenplay is probably one of the most perfect scripts ever crafted. And the scares...hoo boy...the scene where ghostly Mischa Barton appears to the poor boy is truly frightening, as is the other apparitions that appear to him. You really feel his fright, his courage, and his hoplessness for the situation.

I'm sure I'll get some of you saying it's not really a horror film, but it really creeped me out. Plus, you get something extra that most horror films rarely have: true emotional weight.


10. The Last House on the Left, 1972, Wes Craven

Maybe a controversial choice. Almost everyone I've ever shown this film to have been sickened by it and tell me it's disgusting. Well, they're right. It is. But it's also a deeply affecting horror classic.

Based on Ingmar Bergman's classic story of revenge, The Virgin Spring, director Craven was influenced by the images of the war in Vietnam being broadcast over American television. Its story is very simple: A young woman is brutally raped and murdered by a group of thieves; they later accept the hospitality of the young woman's parents, who discover their daughter's fate and exact a fitting and horrible revenge.

Wha'ts so shocking about this film is that looks like a home movie at times, so it's very real...the rape and murder of the young woman is one of the most explicit scenes of violence ever put on film. And the revenge of her parents is no less brutal and explicit.

The Last House on the Left is a disturbing, disgusting film. But it's also one of the scariest films ever made.


9. The Omen, 1976, Richard Donner

"Damien." Just the name itself sounds evil, doesn't it? Raised a Catholic, any film that uses the anti-Christ as it's main baddy always seems to get me, even though I am no longer a religious person. The Omen tells its story of biblical prophecy and the coming of the Devil's son better than any before it. Or since. This is a very scary movie.

Gregory Peck plays the new US ambasador to Great Britian, Lee Remick is his wife. Unfortunately, Peck learns that his young son is the literal Anti-Christ, and he must fight against Him and His protectors.

There are some incredible scenes and images in the film. The evil dogs who protect Damien. David Warner's spectacular death by sheet of glass. Lee Remick standing on that stool on the balcony, just as Damien rides his tricycle towards her. The 666 birthmark under Damien's hairline. And let's not forget:

"Damien! It's for you! It's all for you!" <shudder>

I see they're doing a big-budget remake of this one with an all-star cast. Do yourself a favor and rent the original instead. It'll make you do the sign of the cross even if you aren't Catholic!


8. The Others, 2001, Alejandro Amenábar

Wow. Now THIS is a ghost story! Intricately crafted, this haunted house story is a magnificent study of lonliness and dread. Nicole Kidman plays a WWII-era wife on a remote English island who must care for her two children while waiting to see if her husband will return from the war. Oh, and the big old estate she lives in seems to be haunted.

This is a movie without any gore or psychopath running around chopping heads off. It's about creaking doors and moving shadows and footsteps from upstairs when you know there should be no one up there...Kidman is fantastic, as is the girl who players her daughter.

Like The Sixth Sense before it, this film's success hinges on an audacious twist at the end - one that works completely. Once you know the truth, everything that has gone before it makes perfect sense. There are few films in the history of cinema that can claim it crafted the perfect "gotcha!" The Others is one of them.


7. The Thing, 1982, John Carpenter

Released two weeks after another little alien movie called E.T. came out in the summer of 1982 , John Carpenter's remake of Howard Hawke's The Thing was a cinematic bomb. N one wanted to see this kind of movie those days; instead, audiences flocked to the one about a cuddly little spaceman who liked Reeses Pieces.

The Thing was one of the first movies to ue make-up effects and animatronics and SHOW us the horrors of a shape-shifting monster.

Kurt Russell is part of an Antarctic team who discovers a spaceship in the ice, thousands of years old. Something thaws out, however and begins to take over the team one by one...

The sense of paranoia in this film is palpable. No one knows if the person across from him is human. There's a great scene where the survivors are all tied up so Kurt russell can administer a test to see who is and who isn't the monster.

Scary, brutal, unrelentingly violent. One of the few remakes in film history that is decidedly better than the orginal.

6. The Shining , 1980, Stanley Kubrick

Another Stephen King adapatation, and one that is just one long creepfest from beginning to end. The sense of isolation Kubrick brings to the screen is amazing. Isolation and dread. And let's not forget madness. Jack Nicholson slowly going crazy until he becomes a man wanting to kill his wife a child is one of cinema's great desents into insanity.

Kubrick used almost exclusively a then-new camera device called the Steadi-Cam. It allowed him to constantly move and glide and follow with the camera like never before. I think it's one of the few times in cinema history where a technical breakthrough lent itself so perfectly to the artistry at hand.

But the scares are legendary: Shelly Duval finding Jack's manuscript with nothing but page after page of a certain little nursery rhyme; Danny riding that Big Wheel around the corner and finding those two awful little girls; Shelly Duval's look in the mirror to discover what "Redrum" really means.

"Redrum!"
"Come play with us, Danny."
"Here's Johnny!"

Great, great film. And scary as hell.

5. Dawn of the Dead (1978), 1978, George A. Romero

I remember not seeing this until I was in college and going to a midnight screening...and being completely blown away. THIS is how you make uncompromising horror. I won't rehash the story or thematic underpinnings (unchecked consumerism, etc.), you all know this movie and if you don't, you should. The remake of a couple of years ago was a damn good zombie flick, but it really can't compare to the original.

All I remember from that first viewing was watching the first few minutes and being traumatized by the scene with the military in the tenament building when the zombie husband takes a bite - literally - out of his wives neck. I realized then I was in for a war of attrition between Romero and my nerves. Could I take it? Yes, yes I could. But only barely.

This movie is about survival on a primal level. No more morality, no more taboos, no more societal barriers. Kill or be killed. Worse than that, kill or be eaten. No...worse than that: kill or become one of them.

A visceral, mind-blowing experience. And if you've never seen it in a theater - where you're trapped into watching these horrific images 5o feet by 35 feet, then you really aren't getting the whole experience.


4. Videodrome, 1983, David Cronenberg

Revolutionary. Mindbending. Like no other film on the planet. That's Videodrome. Cronenberg foretells the upcoming world wide emersion into the internet before it even existed. He uses TV, but the message is the same: technology is not only changing society it is changing humans into something else, something more. And on a molecular level. TV screens pulse and bulge with organic sensuality; Vaginal slits open up in a man's stomach so he can insert a video tape; hallucinations become indistiguishable from reality. Reality becomes less real than the Message.

Videodrome is a film Master's masterpiece. Cronenberg has other films high on my list of great horror films: The Fly, The Brood, Dead Ringers. But this is the film that will be watched 100 years from now. And it will frighten and disturb just as much then as it does now.


3. Halloween, 1978, John Carpenter

A perfect, simple concept. Perfectly realized. Halloween is about as great of a genre film as one could hope for. Made on a shoestring budget, with a simple script, decent cast, a William Shatner mask, and possibly one of the best musical scores of all-time...this film is simply perfect.

Carpenter set out to make a "scary movie" that would be shown on Halloween for years to come. Although it's often given the distiction of being the first of the "slasher" flicks of the 80's and 90's, this movie is not gory; hell, it doesn't even show any blood except when the brunette babysitter gets her throat cut in the car. And even then it's so dark and quick it barely registers.

What does register is the unrelenting tension of the last half hour of the film. Carpenter expertly ratches it up, higher and higher until you just can't take it anymore and you do what everyone else is doing: scream. It also does something very few horror movies have the balls to do these days: take its sweet time getting to the really scary parts. Instead, it introduces us to characters we actually like and begin to care for. You see, if we don't really know the characters horror movies begin offing one by one, we don't care, do we? We really care about Jamie Lee Curtis by the time the killings start. and that makes all the difference.


2. The Exorcist , 1973, William Friedkin

Another "devil" movie that scared the crap out of me as a kid. And it still does. What is it about possesion that is so frightening? Is it the loss of control, of self?

Whatever it is, The Exorcist was one of the first horror films that took its premise seriously. A little girl becomes possesed by a demon. A fallen priest tries to save her even though he no longer believes. A mother who does not believe in god or heaven or the devil at all must confront that which should not be.

The exorcism scenes are legendary, with the pea soup and the levitating and the crucifix masturbation...Friedken knew how to pummel the audience until it had no defences left. Why else show the needle going into poor Linda Blair when she's at the hospital getting a spinal tap? It's to weaken you so that you have nothing left when the director throws the real horror at you.

A lot of great movies tend to decline with age, as it's usually a movie of its time. Not The Exorcist. It's so damn scary it got non-believers going to church.


1. Alien, 1978, Ridley Scott

In space no one can hear you scream. I jut type that little phrase out and it sends chills down my spine.

What is it that makes Alien my favorite horror movie of all time? It's really no more than a haunted house movie in space. But it has realism in its fantasy. It has a grungy, dirty spaceship, not one that's shiny and futuristic. It's got one of the best ensemble casts ever. Fantastic sound and art design. And, of course, it's got the very best, very baddest screen monster of all-time.

I love the opening 30 minutes of this film where all we're doing is getting to know the ship and its crew. Director Scott knew we had to know the ship as well as its crew for us to be scared later, instead of confused and wondering, "where are we?"

Certain scenes are justifiably famous:

The "chest-burster."
Ripley in her underwear.
Ash getting his head literally beaten off his shoulders.

Alien is the classic example of the whole being much greater than the sum of its parts. The improvisational acting sets it apart from most other horror films, as they normally have - and need - a stylized way of acting.

The scariest part of any movie anywhere, to me, is near the end, when there are only three left. Parker and Lambert are confronted by the Alien and Parker is killed. Lambert is cornered and that awful Alien appendenge comes up between her legs--

--and we cut to Ripley running through the ship, trying to get to Lambert and all we hear over the ship's intercom are Lambert's panting and sobs and sheer terror right before her final scream is cut off by god only knows what--

Gets me every time.

Alien is the very best horror movie of all time.

[guids]

Dom, have you seen the 2nd poltergiest, not the cut up studio version? if so can i get a critique?

[Dominic]

by the way, if you want to look at this list with links, it's in another forum. I'l let you guess which one as [censored] will only delete my thread if i make a link to it.

[siccjay]

It's sad to me that Nightmare on Elm Street doesn't make the list, but I haven't seen a lot of these. I think Aliens is better than Alien. Might just be because I seen it first though. I need to rewatch the original.

[econophile]

i'm really surprised at this list. i don't classify alien, sixth sense, or videodrome as horror. and i think scream belongs on the list, unless you have a separate category for "dead teenager" movies.

[Dominic]

[ QUOTE ]
Dom, have you seen the 2nd poltergiest, not the cut up studio version? if so can i get a critique?

[/ QUOTE ]

I didn't know there was a different version than the studio released Poltergeist 2. I saw it many years ago and it was a servicable sequel...but it pales in comparison to the original. The best thing about the 2nd one was the TV ad they used for it:

the little blonde girl in front of the TV, looking over her shoulder saying..."they're ba-aack."

[Dominic]

[ QUOTE ]
It's sad to me that Nightmare on Elm Street doesn't make the list, but I haven't seen a lot of these. I think Aliens is better than Alien. Might just be because I seen it first though. I need to rewatch the original.

[/ QUOTE ]

I don't think of Aliens as a horror movie - more of an action movie. But it is great.

I really like Nightmare on Elm Street but for me it's not quite great.

[Jeff W]

<----#2

I do have to bow to Alien's superiority tho.

[Dominic]

[ QUOTE ]
i'm really surprised at this list. i don't classify alien, sixth sense, or videodrome as horror. and i think scream belongs on the list, unless you have a separate category for "dead teenager" movies.

[/ QUOTE ]

Scream, while entertaining, is really a movie about horror movies...it's a bit too self-referential for me to classify as one of the best ever.

I understand your thoughts on the movies you don't classify as horror...I went with my gut on these choices - which films really scared me. All of these films did.

although...with alien...what other kind of movie could it be?? The only reason you might classify it as science fiction is that it takes place in space. You could've taken the whole thing and put it on earth without changing a whole lot. It's a haunted house movie.

[guids]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Dom, have you seen the 2nd poltergiest, not the cut up studio version? if so can i get a critique?

[/ QUOTE ]

I didn't know there was a different version than the studio released Poltergeist 2. I saw it many years ago and it was a servicable sequel...but it pales in comparison to the original. The best thing about the 2nd one was the TV ad they used for it:

the little blonde girl in front of the TV, looking over her shoulder saying..."they're ba-aack."

[/ QUOTE ]


Dom,
Im a complete retard, I meant the exercise 2, not poltergiest.